Five-peat!

Much is spoken about Paul Johnson's dominance in the Commander-In-Chief's Trophy series, where he won the annual competition among the three service academies five years running from 2003-2007. What is less frequently mentioned is the record of the teams Johnson beat to achieve this distinction. With the unique opportunity now afforded America's newly-ordained "fourth" service academy this bowl season, Johnson's previous successes merit a closer examination:

Year	Army	Air Force
2003	0-13	7-5
2004	2-9	5-6
2005	4-7	4-7
2006	3-9	4-8
2007	3-9	9-4
TOTAL	12-47	29-30

The first thing one notices: Johnson enjoyed a veritable gravy train of miserable Army teams-- in fact his tenure at Navy paralleled one of the losingest six-year stretches in the history of Army football. Further was Johnson the beneficiary of an Air Force program which compiled three consecutive losing seasons for the first time in twenty-five years, and which finished with fewer than five losses only once in Johnson's six seasons. All told, across Johnson's streak, he faced only two teams from either academy that even finished the season with a winning record.

Yes, Navy football was quite bad when Johnson arrived. And yes he should be afforded every accolade due a coach who annually cobbled together winning seasons out of the 110th ranked schedule. But it's not like he was conquering a pair of credible opponents on a yearly basis in some heroic struggle for service academy pre-eminence.

Of course the myth of Johnson's infallibility in rivalry games has already been thoroughly discredited against five-loss UGA, and six-loss UGA again, illustrating all the more poignantly that Navy football is a far, far cry from the rigors inherent in piloting a major conference program, even if it does play in the "Almost Competitive" ACC.